Shooting for the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

up. At eighteen, his shoulders grew deliciously broad. Stella wanted to lay her head in the crook of his neck and feel all that solid mass beneath her cheek.
    She stared and stared, and he never seemed to notice.
    Only once had Stella gone a little crazy and actually thrown herself at him. It was more than ten years ago now, on the night of Bear’s high school graduation. She’d been so proud of him, and so sad that he’d leave in the fall to follow Hank out west. To mark the occasion, she’d stolen a bottle of champagne out of her father’s wine cellar and chilled it in the stream which ran downhill from the Lazarus home to Bear’s house.
    God, she’d tried so hard to impress him. She’d even bought wine glasses at a store in town, because her mother was much more observant than her father, and the temporary theft of stemware would have been noticed. And she’d needed nice glasses, because this was meant to be a special moment.
    She’d cornered him that evening after the ceremony, before he was ready to leave for a night’s worth of partying with his friends. At sixteen, Stella already knew how to uncork champagne. And when she’d heard that satisfying pop, and then carefully poured two flutes full of bubbly, everything had been going perfectly. They’d sipped and joked their way through a glass each.
    That’s when Stella had made her move. She’d set her glass down on the flat rock behind Bear’s little log cabin. Then she’d gotten up and proceeded to sit on his lap.
    Bear’s chin had snapped up, and his eyebrows flew upwards. She should have stopped to read the signs. But Stella had always been a fearless girl, even in the face of probable defeat. At sixteen, she’d already figured out that the only way to get what you wanted was to take a few risks. So she’d put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
    For a few golden moments, everything had been glorious. His lips were softer than she’d expected. And from the back of his throat came a startled little sound. Yes, her heart chanted. Finally . He’d taken control of the kiss, and the slow slide of his tongue had taken her breath away. High on her own bravery, Stella had leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his broad body.
    That’s when everything stopped.
    The second Stella had connected with Bear’s warm chest, he seemed to freeze as solid as the slabs of granite that her father used on his building projects. Then Bear had lifted Stella off of his lap, and stood up. When he’d spoken, his voice had been a rough whisper. “You shouldn’t do that, Stella-Bell.”
    And with that, he’d walked away, into the house that he shared with his dad.
    She’d been absolutely mortified.
    That night, she’d finished the bottle of champagne by herself. She’d kicked off the dainty shoes she’d worn for the occasion (they weren’t very comfortable anyway) and polished off the wine straight from the bottle. As a result, she’d puked in the woods before she went inside to bed, and woke up with a nasty headache the next morning.
    But it did not compare with the ache in her heart, or the shame of rejection burning under her skin.
    For ten days afterwards, she’d ducked Bear. Then her brother came home for the summer, which meant that Bear was around, too. The three of them had always hung out together, and if Stella had gone on avoiding Bear, everyone in town would have wondered why. So she had to show her face the first time he came over for dinner.
    That night she’d taken extra care in selecting her outfit. She’d even gone so far as to smear a little lipstick on, which for Stella was quite an extraordinary effort. Dinner had seemed to last forever, too.
    But then afterwards, Bear had come up to her in the family room at a moment when Hank had ducked into the bathroom, damn him. And she’d braced herself for an awkward conversation.
    “Hey,” Bear had said. “Do you want to play some ping pong?”
    It had taken her a half second to decide